Defying Gravity
by flutflutflyer
Summary: Eight years after LoK, the Equalist threat is far from over. Trapped in a freefalling elevator, a chi-blocked Jinora and Bolin face death, but they face it together. Jinora/Bolin. One-shot.


A/N: Completely non-canon, eight years after the events of Legend of Korra.

The air chakra is blocked by grief . . .

. . . and deals with love.

* * *

It's over.

The Equalists have taken the Pro-bending Arena.

The Equalists have taken her father.

And the Equalists might have taken her bending as well.

The far-off explosions beat in time with her rapid pulse. Dying moans resound in her ears, competing with roaring blood, but the only things she knows are the feel of the broken ground beneath her feet and his hand in hers, dragging her behind him, a lifeline in a world of chaos and destruction.

"Move!" he yells, forcing her into the elevator, which miraculously opens, and wrenching the door shut with enough power to crush it to the wall. Hints of gas escape through the thin line at the bottom, but he punches the button marked with the character for _Lobby_, and the elevator jerks. For a moment she is terrified they are stuck. Then it starts to descend.

He presses his back against the elevator door, panting heavily, blood trickling from a cut on his face. His green eyes reveal his unadulterated fear, yet when he catches her looking, he inhales, and she sees his shaking cease, if only for her sake.

"Your dad's going to be okay," he promises, his nostrils flaring from his attempts to keep inspire and expire. She can't hear his words, can only hear her own heart. "We saw him go down, but I swear on my life he's going to be okay. Jinora. Jinora, look at me. Please. _Jinora_." Blinking, she lifts her head, and his emerald gaze captures hers. His palm is warm on her shoulder; he folds her into an embrace, conferring his strength to her through his touch. "Korra and Mako are going to be okay, too. They're going to take down the Equalists."

"What if the Equalists chi-blocked them too?" Her voice is inaudible. "What if they're all—?"

He interrupts her. "They're not. And we'll be okay. Okay?"

She buries her face in his shirt, the pro-bending uniform wet and salty with sweat, and concentrates on his right arm around her waist and his left hand softly stroking her hair. They haven't had a moment like this since she was little and still could. "Okay."

No sooner has the sound left her mouth when the elevator stops moving, jarring her, and creaks. From above, there is a noise like the metallic twang of a snapped cord. His pulse increases tenfold, the beats pounding against her forehead in time with hers, the muscles in his arms and chest tensing.

His pupils swallow his irises whole.

The balance tips; the floor gives out beneath her feet; and suddenly they are falling.

The scream rips itself from her throat before she can stop it. As she slips from his grip, she is lifted into the air. Only that morning it was the element of freedom. Yet now that she has lost its power, it is the element of death.

"Bolin," she whispers, her blood frozen in place, the breath snagged from her lungs with immeasurable might. "Am I going to die?"

Around them, the iron cage screeches as it drops uncontrollably. "Jinora!" His tone snaps her to the present, his hand centimetres from her face. "Reach! Reach for me!" Her lifeline. The one person who can save her now. Every iota of will in her body flows towards him. She reaches. Amid the wind keeping them aloft, his fingers curl around hers, his emerald eyes keeping her here, with him. "Jinora, I need you to airbend."

Her sides still hurt where the chi-blockers stabbed her, the light hairs on the back of her neck still erect from the electric current surged through her. But _he_ is asking. _Him_. She has to, for _him_.

The wind refuses to be tamed, her fingers fluttering through emptiness, her core drained of bending and filled with grief.

"I can't."

He draws her close. "You can."

"I can't!"

"You_ can_! Think about me, about your father and mother, about Korra and Mako and Ikki and Meelo and Rohan! Think about _you_! Please, Jinora, please!"

She realises what he is doing, shifting her so that she is on top of him. His body will protect her. If she fails, she will be the cause of his death. He, her best friend, will become her guardian angel.

"Bolin." Tears float in curious orbs of light above them, her vision blurred with sorrow. "I'm sorry. I _can't_."

"You can." He hugs her tightly, nuzzling the top of her hair, her face in the hollow of his neck, pulling slightly away to wipe the wetness from her cheeks. "I know you can. I know you better than you know yourself. If I had to be stuck in a freefalling elevator with anyone, it would be you."

His smile tears her heart from her centre and shatters it into a thousand jagged pieces on the floor.

"Bolin, if we're going to die, I have to tell you something." The metal shrieks. Something somewhere fails, and the elevator moves even more quickly, heeding physics' call. She has to do it now, or she will never have the chance. "Bolin—I—I—_I love you._"

His eyes widen, green as the leaf in the wind. And then he kisses her, gently, so much more gently than she had ever imagined even in her wildest fantasy, as gently as a feather alighting on stone.

The air buoys them. The moment entraps itself, holds in place, never lets go, light as a bird, strong as a rock, warm as everything between them.

The moment defies gravity.

After forever she realises they are no longer falling, the wind wrapping itself around her once more, giving in to her heart.

Slowly, she allows the elevator to make contact with the ground floor, and she drops them as well, gently as his kiss. He gathers her in his arms, his gaze steady.

"I told you you could do it," he murmurs.

The elevator _dings_, the door sliding open.

"And I love you too."


End file.
